by Rustic313 » Sun Mar 31, 2024 10:33 pm
Just kicking this around, and looking at the shape plus the polydrop...
Rather than a rather difficult to build curved shape, I think you could probably just use straight angles and get 80% of the way there. Keeping everything straight opens up the use of easy to source and work with construction materials too like sheet plywood, aluminum panels, roof panels, etc.
DESIGN ONE (SIMPLEST)
- Front: Straight vertical up until you get to the window height of the tow vehicle, then a slanted piece at approximately a 45 degree angle to get to the roof peak of the trailer.
- Slightly sloped long roof back to the vertical line marked "15 degrees."
- Rear: Chop it off straight down at that point. "Kammback."
That is basically what the polydrop does with their smaller trailer, except instead of going straight up at the front and back they have a slope. For a DIY home build "KISS" seems to just call for going straight up and down.
This is pretty simple: You have two straight vertical walls, and a roof with two different angles on it. Water runoff is not an issue.
Eyeballing it with the help of a CAD sketch of a basic steel trailer on the ecomodder tool, if you are 4' high at the peak of your interior box space (4x8 sheet of plywood... and keeping the total height shorter than a sedan or CUV height), I think you can go about 10' long if you chop it down at the 15 degree mark. If you're 52" high at the peak of your interior box space, it looks like you can go about 14' long.
DESIGN TWO (HARDER)
For a longer trailer you could put a "bend" in the roof piece, effectively having a fairly long gently sloping roof, and then a bend to a steeper roof segment towards the back. Exact placement depends on the length of the trailer vs. the airfoil template, but the slope clearly gets steeper the further back you go.
Looking at the CAD drawing of the steel trailer, I think I'd probably go with a gently sloping roof to the fourth line (between those marked 25 and 15 degrees -- can't quite read it), then a steeper roof to the 22 degree mark. This lets your design be about a third longer.
This is remarkably similar to what Polydrops does with their longer trailer.
Depending on how you do this you could also have that second "bend" be hinged for a kitchen space. From a practical point of view, honestly most of the space aft of the line marked 15 degrees seems pretty marginal in utility. The headroom is getting really quite short. And as interesting as having the rear galley is, adding that hinge adds more water intrusion problems (just google "teardrop galley leaking" -- seems a common issue).
I guess it could also be useful if you had something with extremely low height, but I can't imagine going much shorter than 4' tall.
I also honestly don't know how practical this is. I would certainly consider building a 5x10 DIY trailer, but a 5x20 seems like a lot.